I'd just forget it an move on! (And yes, I voted to undelete but it was sort of a knee jerk reaction as I just finished editing my answer to discover that my answer was deleted which surprised me so I hit the nearest undelete button before I really worked out what had happened.)

Passing a boost::shared_ptr<T> to a function where I want to change it in a function and see the change outside the function, is it better to pass it as a non-const ref or just return it from the function instead and pass by value?

My question is what does a constructor return? This question is not quite different from "What is the return type of a constructor?"
I have read somewhere that a constructor returns a complete object implicitly (i.e implicit return type is the name of the class) but it shall not be specified expl...

I found this code:
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
std::cout << "Hello World!" << std::endl;
}
How do I run this code?
What software do I need?
How do I use that software to make a program?
I thought this would be a good faq for absolute beginners. Each answer could p...

@sbi The badges are at +100 votes/20 upvoted answers for bronze, +400 votes/80 upvoted answers for silver, and +1k votes/200 upvoted answers for gold. You can find your number of answers and votes in the tag area on your user page.

I just know it was -21 because I had +21 on my answer to that question :-)

Since a copy constructor
MyClass(const MyClass&);
and an = operator overload
MyClass& operator = (const MyClass&);
have pretty much the same code, the same parameter, and only differ on the return, is it possible to have a common function for them both to use?

Pod people (also known as The Body Snatchers) is a nickname given to an alien species featured in the 1955 novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the 1978 remake of the same name and the 1993 film Body Snatchers.
History from the novel
The Pod People are a race of nomadic, extraterrestrial parasites originating from a now dying planet. Realizing that it was only a matter of time before the planet's resources would be completely depleted, the pods somehow evolved the ability to defy gravity and leave their planet's atmosphere in the search...

In The Beginning[TM] there were several C++ chat rooms. I think this one was the oldest, but was abandoned by its owner, so others were created. At which point some mod stepped in to end this madness by transferring ownership to several then active members. (This also got the idea started to have many owners , so this wouldn't happen again.)

I was trying to find the discussions leading to this in the room's transcript, but I failed. But it's out there, you can look it up if you have enough time at your hand.